User blog:GrandMethuselah67/Neutral 'verse Character Sheet: Emperor Bradley Hargrave
Name: Bradley Hargrave Aliases: Emperor Hargrave, Supreme Director of Ahzernekistan, The Technocrat Age: 22 Species: Superhuman Powers: Data Warping (Ontopathogenesis), Customization, Remaking, Imaginative Technomagic, Codification/Decodification Abilities/Skills: Mass Consciousness, Advanced Technology (Psionic Bio-Tech, Energetic Bio-Tech), Hypercognition, Psychic Shadow, Transhuman Transformation Alignment: Lawful Evil (Lawful Good???) Affiliations: The World Empire, The People's States of Ahzernekistan Motto: "Only through my guiding hand will humanity achieve greatness." Quotes: "Attention leaders of the world: over the past few months, I have seized control of your countries. Your armies will stand down and drop their weapons. You will give up your sovereignty and give it to me. All problems will be solved directly by me and my office from now on. Any opposition or acts of resistance will be brutally crushed by my forces. My office is prepared to set up a world bank with one digital currency that will be kept track of by my A.I. We are also prepared to replace all fossil fuels and propaine derivatives with specialized solar panels, wind turbines, hybrid zero-emission energy technology, and nuclear power plants, all of which will be set up in the Sahara Desert. Currently, I am liberating all technology from the top technology companies in the world, and all scientific innovation, medical treatment, designs, and concepts are free and within public domain starting today. The world's governments will give up all of their secrets and release every possible plan and secret onto the internet for everyone to see. As of now, I have the names of every white-collar thief, every corrupt politician, and every secret trust in the world. I will personally detain them and punish them myself. Be not afraid: I am aware of the heinous crimes I have committed in the past. But know that I am ultimately interested in the good of mankind." "Everything I do, I do for mankind. I imprison my enemies so they do not disturb the order. I watch the people so I may prevent crimes before they happen. The individual is important, and their civil liberties are maintained, yet they will not destroy the collective. The collective must be maintained, protected, and only by my guiding hand will that happen." "Evolution happens not only on the biological level, but the social level as well. Humans have evolved to form groups, collectives, to follow strong leaders. It was under a strong leader that the Egyptians built the pyramids, and it was under a strong leader that the Roman Empire reached its peak. Absolute power has been abused, but only by those who are weak in and of themselves, only by those who do not understand what it is to rule. But I do, and under my strong leadership, humanity shall reach the stars." "What have I'' done? Please. Born into a totalitarian dictatorship by my overbearing father and my very ill mother, I'd taken the throne after the death of my father and unified my country in a matter of years. What have ''you done? Any of you? In the end, you were all useless. Leeches. None of you had managed to do any of the things you were 'democratically' voted in for. Not that you'd tried in the first place. I'm taking over because I feel strongly that the world would fare much better under my leadership. When the world needed leaders, you were bureaucrats, obstructing important decisions for mere ideological differences. But perhaps that's the nature of oligarchy, greedy, selfish morons grasping for what they want and making the world sink beneath the water in the process. The world doesn't need politicians, nor bureaucrats. The world needs a single, strong leader intelligent enough to efficiently solve their problems. The world needs a technocrat." Theme: '''Red Army Choir - Oh Fields, My Fields ' '''Archetypes:' Totalitarian Utilitarian, Well-Intentioned Extremist, Utopia Justifies the Means, Pragmatic Villainy, The Chessmaster Origin: Bradley is the Emperor of Azernekistan, an Island fifty miles north of Scandanavia and an originally isolationist Fascist regime...until Bradley came into power. His father, Charles Hargrave II, died of a heart attack, leaving Bradley the ruler of the small nation. At first, Bradley didn't know how to run his government, but as his powers developed, he began to become more of a visionary. When he was nineteen, Azernekistan was on the brink of collapse. Bradley's office was corrupt and plotting against him, but Bradley used his powers to corrupt the traitors of his office into perfect copies of him, which scared a lot of other memers into being his allies. From there, he used his powers to greatly improve the technology of Azernekistan until they were many years ahead of the world outside. Bradley maintained absolute control of the people, eliminating all crime in Azernekistan and ultimately improving the quality of their lives through technology, welfare, and education. After he made his country nigh-utopian, he expanded to the rest of the world, taking control of world governments and establishing a worldwide totalitarian empire. In this empire, citizens enjoy many civil freedoms, hyper-advanced technology, and freedom of information...but those who speak against the government, express displeasure vocally or mentally (even in private), or try to rebel against the Hargravian regime tend to disappear overnight. Powers (In Detail): Terra Ultima The Hargrave Matrix:' The Hargrave Matrix, also known as the "True Soul of Hargrave", is a collection of all scanned data, a place where Hargrave contains everything about himself in the form of raw symbols. The Hargrave Matrix is a metaphysical place, in the sense that is in between everything: life and death, fantasy and reality, mind and matter. Bradley's powers originate from the Hargrave Matrix, meaning Bradley is the embodiment of his own power and origin. Due to how big the Hargrave Matrix is, it essentially became a universe in and of itself, a sentient one embodied by Bradley himself, and constantly shifts and changes to whatever Bradley's goals or emotions may be. Much like Terra Ultima, the Hargrave Matrix can absorb other planes or aspects of reality. In fact, Terra Ultima is a physical manifestation of the Hargrave Matrix. Life in Ahzernekistan Entertainment:' Of course, re-wiring the language of the people to get rid of certain words won't stop dissatisfaction. Bradley knew this, so he'd underwent another project to completely fuse civilian life with pop culture. With a manipulation of the media, he'd ensured that talented citizens would become famous, and then he'd made sure that the media would cover them primarily, more than they cover the actions of the government and its people. This results in citizens barely realizing that every aspect of their lives was controlled by the government, instead being hyper-focused on things such as entertainment, always focused on new technology being created, new albums being released, or different TV shows premering. The media is manipulated in a way as to bombard citizens with consumerist ploys, making them more focused on entertainment media than the government. The result of this project is most citizens not being entirely aware that there even IS a government. Most citizens are convinced they live in some kind of anarchist utopia, where they have total freedom of speech (being unaware of the words completely erased from their vocabulary) and expression. Due to this common view by citizens, Hargrave is able to operate discreetly while maintaining absolute control of the populace. The Office of Hargrave: Political officials, however, are immune to the tricks Bradley plays on citizenry. To deal with them, the Emperor has fashioned himself as a god, some kind of living embodiment of Kingship. As a result, many officials in his office that aren't actually his proxies and avatars worship him as some sort of omnipresent deity. Bradley rewards the especially loyal by making them "high priests", giving them magical abilities and perks above the average citizen, which the emperor continue to provide so long as the official stays completely loyal to him. Those who find ways to betray him are immediately assimilated into the Hargrave Matrix (a collection of all of Bradley's data/proxies that make up his extended being), where Hargrave would learn any plans to usurp him and immediately destroy the opposition. As a result of this religious control over his office, the officials beneath him both fear and revere him, most not even seeing Hargrave himself except through proxies or chosen avatars. Troubleshooting: After a few generations, Emperor Hargrave had come to notice that making dissenters disappear overnight was a good way of disturbing civilian life and creating unrest. Due to his goals of creating a totalitarian shadow government unseen by the people, this model of punishment for citizenry was incompatible with his goals. So he created a new initiative called OPERATION: CHANDRA. '''The goal of the operation is simple: give citizens no reason to rebel against the totalitarian regime and ensure maximum satisfaction while maintaining full, complete control. The implementation of this initiative had increased how happy citizens are with their life, even those who had managed to break free from the media illusion and discover the true nature of the Ahzernekistanian government. Citizens that so much as think of distaste for the state of the Empire disappear whenever they are alone, but only briefly. They are taken to the Chandra Rooms, located in seemingly innocent buildings at unspecified locations upon every street. Within these Rooms, the citizen undergoes a full scan via technomagical machines that replicate Hargrave's Data Warping. Once the scan is over, the citizen is replaced with a perfect copy with one minor change: they have no complaints with the current regime. That copy is unaware that they're a copy, and thus are sent off to live the civilian's life unaware of the original being kidnapped. The original isn't as lucky, however. The fate of the original citizen is being broken up into raw data via decodification procedures (a process in which the citizen is fully conscious). This raw data is then assimilated into the Hargrave Matrix, where each piece is analyzed to discern the reason for this particular citizen's unhappiness, and once the source of the dissatisfaction is found, Bradley takes it into account and modifies the very reality of the Empire to eliminate that source of dissatisfaction, that way the copy or anyone with that particular problem never has it again. Of course, this is done in such a way that it does not compromise the integrity of the empire, the happiness and satisfaction of other citizens, or the trajectory of Hargrave's plans. If such a conflict arises, Bradley performs a full scan of all minds in Ahzernekistan and either retroactively erases their existence from the universe, or uploads their minds into a Polis, a virtual dream-plane where they can be under the illusion that they live in a world where their dissatisfaction is gone. '''The Polis Coalition: Every terrestrial planet in the Solar System besides Earth, the material from the Asteroid Belt, Kupier Belt, and Oort Cloud, and some material from other planes has gone into a massive project, creating megastructures. These megastructures are disk-shaped supercomputers the size of entire planets, each of which has enough processing power to sustain its own self-contained virtual plane, or Polis. This Polis Coalition is a creation of Emperor Bradley Hargrave as a sort of territory for immigrants and prisoners. Each being in a polis lives in a virtual world that can either be connected to that of other citizens, or completely solipsistic in nature -- which is to say, they are the only "real" being in the Polis, and everyone else is just an artificial intelligence programmed to interact with the citizen. Polis environments are usually paradises, utopias that are perfectly tailored to whomever is experiencing them. Due to the nature of the Polis, each citizen can live in their own perfect world without the risk of hurting someone else. However, there is a catch as always. Each citizen of the Polis Coalition is kept under the same rules and conditions as the citizens on Earth, except Bradley is watching them literally 24/7, due to the citizens of the Polis Coalition being "criminals", immigrants (whom Bradley has an inherent distrust of), or prisoners. Furthermore, Bradley is virtually omnipotent within the Polises, and thus doesn't bother to hide the true nature of the totalitarian hell that Ahzernekistan truly is. Citizens within Polises must live in a perfect, utopian world fully aware that Bradley is constantly watching them, controlling every aspect of their life. Due to the nature of the Polises, it is fully possible for sentient minds to randomly spawn within the code. When this happens, the minds are usually uploaded into physical bodies on Earth to maintain the illusion that the population wasn't sterilized (an initiative Bradley had taken to be rid of the problem of overpopulation). Category:Blog posts